There is a new trend in
Russian cinema: biopics about famous people from the
past. The most striking examples are two films about cult heroes of the 1970s—the singer Vladimir Vysotsky (“Vysotsky: Thank You
for Being Alive,” 2011) and the hockey player Valeri Kharlamov (“Legend No. 17,” 2013).

The biopic “Yuri
Gagarin: First in Space,” about the first
cosmonaut to circle the Earth, was also released in 2013. Work is now under way
on films about goalkeeper Lev Yashin and the outstanding Russian wrestler Ivan
Poddubny.

Ideological rather than
commercial interests are what lie behind this fashion. The fact that almost all
modern Russian films are made with financial help from the state (from 10 percent up to 100 percent of the budget) means that the authorities have levers of
influence on producers and directors. Filmmakers have been told to create a home-grown
version of Hollywood.

These discussions began when
Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” was released. For 10 years, the
overarching objective of Russian directors was to “make a film like Spielberg’s,
but about our own troops.”

Realizing that it was
impossible to beat Hollywood, they decided to rely on films for domestic
consumption: Special preference was given to people who made films promoting
the “unity of the nation.”

The search for stories that would excite both the
generations of formerly Soviet people and those who had grown up in a
democratic Russia forced them to return to the subject of war. Films about wars—from the Russo-Turkish War to World War II—became a trend in the new patriotic cinema of
the 2000s.

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Hundreds of films and TV shows were
made on this subject, but the majority of them had no box-office or critical
success. It gradually became clear that the audience was tired of such films.

According to the Movie Research Company, the first half of 2011 saw a 29
percent slump in viewers’ interest in Russian films—from 521,600 to 369,300 viewers, on the basis of
the number of viewers for one film—in
comparison with the figures for the same period of the previous year.

Art of Cinema magazine
forecasts that, in 2014, Russian films will receive only 10 percent of the
total money made from films. Not one war film broke even on Russian showings
(except for “The Brest Fortress,” 2011). The mass audience is no longer excited
by war.

Today, following the
unexpected success of “Legend No. 17,”
many see biopics of prominent people as their salvation and the goldmine that
will finally make mass Russian cinema popular again.

The first effort in this
genre was “Admiral”(2008)—a film about Adm. Kolchak, who led the anti-Bolshevik
resistance during the civil war in Russia. The next success was a film about
the singer Vladimir Vysotsky, who had a very great following in Russia. The
success of these films injected new life into the situation.

The film about Valeri Kharlamov was not so much a biopic as a film
about the confrontation between two systems—the United States
and the Soviet Union. The hero himself was just a cog in the machine of the
Cold War.

The recent biopic of Yuri Gagarin, the first cosmonaut, only came out
half a century after his flight. The film was not successful at the box office,
partly because of the lack of powerful television advertising, and partly
because of the film’s artistic weakness. The film presents Gagarin almost as an
icon, without any human weaknesses.

Vladimir Putin recently lent
his personal support to the idea of making a film about the outstanding Soviet
goalkeeper Lev Yashin. The film about Yashin has been commissioned by the
management of the VTB Arena Park project, with backing from VTB bank. Shooting
will begin in 2014, and the film’s release is planned for 2017.

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Andrei Peregudov, VTB senior vice-president and head of the VTB Arena Park project,
has already described how he wants the film to look: “Of all the films I’ve
seen recently, the most impressive was the one about Gagarin. I want the film
about Yashin to have just as strong an emotional impact as that.” According to
Peregudov, after lengthy negotiations, the goalkeeper’s widow, Valentina
Yashina, has agreed to be involved in the work on the film and act as a
consultant on it.

There is nothing bad or wrong
about the biopic genre itself. Hundreds of these films are made in the West, about basketball players, musicians,
writers and artists—about all kinds of striking figures. After watching a Western
biopic, you come out understanding how much a person can do, how important it
is to be free and to believe in yourself.

Russian biopics, meanwhile, have a
different moral: If you want to be famous and respected, you have to
collaborate with the state.